Sustainability From the Inside Out

There are a variety of group and individual assignments in this program.  You will find descriptions below.

Community Service
A regular, important component of our program learning.

Research Project
This three-quarter project is designed to provide you with the opportunity to explore a topic that is central to our program’s guiding questions, improve your library research knowledge and skills, create an annotated bibliography, write a professional book review, and work collaboratively to present your findings in a professional manner.  Your fall quarter work will conclude with a research prospectus.  You will continue this research in the winter, where your project will culminate in a paper.  Spring quarter, each of you will conduct an applied element of your project in the community; this will be self-directed work.  Specific assignment details are available on moodle..

Seminar and Seminar Response papers
During fall quarter we will be reading, reflecting on, integrating, and discussing several texts in our exploration of sustainability. Seminar is a cornerstone of your Evergreen education. To get the most out of this experience, you must complete your readings and assignments well before seminar and bring that week’s readings to class. An assignment will be due most weeks to the online forum before the start of class time.  Cynthia’s student will also bring in a hard copy (stapled).

For Tuesday’s seminars, please prepare a one-page response paper which has four components.

• i)a statement of the author’s thesis and whether you think the thesis is well supported
• ii) your response to the reading(s) (such as what challenged your thinking, surprised you, what you liked or didn’t like, what you had difficulty accepting),
• iii) an integrative statement in which you connect ideas from this reading(s) to something else we’ve read, or discussed previously and,
• iv) three questions for seminar discussion which are tied to the reading(s).  To be productive, these questions should defy yes/no answers and should require more of your classmates than simple opinion.  Be sure to cite authors and page numbers in your integrative statement and to be specific about which parts of the text are motivating your questions.

If we are reading a selection of articles or chapters, please choose two to write about.  These written responses should be posted on the appropriate forum sites on moodle.

Thursday’s assignments will vary week to week, although all assignments involve reading an entire text or a selection of text. Specific assignment details will be announced during class.

After each seminar, you have until the start of the next seminar to read and respond to at least three response papers written by other students and posted on the on-line forum.  If you’d like to respond to a paper that already has three responses, please choose another paper so that everyone can receive feedback.  Of course, you are always welcome to read and respond to more than three papers.

Peer Learning Group
During fall quarter students will be meeting in small groups on Tuesday’s at lunch to further explore program topics and to discuss research findings.  Peer feedback on research papers and in-depth processing of the program content are associated with this learning group.

Jigsaw Teaching
Once during the quarter, you will engage in a peer teaching exercise on an assigned program reading.  You will work with a small group to understand and analyze the reading, collaborate about prospective teaching techniques, and teach your assigned reading to another group of students.  Details will be given in class.

Practice Journal
Understanding sustainability and yourself includes learning about the connections between your mind, body, and spirit.  To facilitate this understanding, we will participate in a basic asana and meditation practice and other movement activities together each week.

You will need a journal to record your weekly observations on your practices. This can be a simple notebook, something you make, or a bound journal—it is up to you.  This should be separate from your class notebook.  You will use this to collect reflective writings that we assign in class as well as writing that you will do at home.  Your student fee has paid for art supplies which will arrive early in the quarter.  Please make sure you have your journal with you at all class meetings (starting week one) and your art supplies after they arrive.

This journal will be a place where you can begin to explore the patterns that have helped shape the relationship between your mind, body and spirit and will guide you into developing a deeper understanding of the way program themes relate to you as an individual.  We will periodically pick up the journals; we may or may not read them.  It will serve as a reservoir of information about yourself from which you will be able to draw rich material for many program activities.

Awareness Practices
Each week you will work on commitments to practices in sustainable, intentional living.

Program Portfolio
Documenting your work throughout the quarter will be critical. Obtain a 3-ring binder immediately in which you can keep all the program handouts and all your program work, including your self-evaluation. Don’t throw anything away anything until the program’s over in June. There will be no basis for writing your evaluations unless you can resubmit all your work in an organized fashion.

Additional Items
Other assignments may include questions for guest speakers, unannounced in-class essays on the assigned readings, in-class writings etc.